Wicked Games (26 page)

The words left his mouth slowly, with a certain amount of ironic defiance. “I love Lilah, Jules.” He lessened the pressure of the knife on her neck.

Lilah’s face pruned as the emotions surged through her. This was all she wanted. All she’d ever wanted. She took a step forward.

“Tell her again,” she said through her tears. She
purred the words, like a child asking for a lullaby.

“Lilah,” Carter said. “She heard me.”

“I need to hear it again,” Lilah said. Her tears overwhelmed her; they filled her words with water.

She took another step.

“I need to hear it! Never stop staying it, Carter.”

Another step.

“Never, ever stop.”

Another step. Her foot caught in a rope and she tripped slightly, taking her eyes off Carter and Jules for just a second. She kicked at the rope, trying to flip it off of her ankle, but it wouldn’t twist the right way. She shook her foot, raised it, and balanced on the other one.

Carter squeezed Jules’s arm. This was their chance. He dropped the knife from her neck and the two of them scrambled forward toward Lilah just as she freed herself from the rope.

Swinging the harpoon gun in front of her, Lilah tried to regain control, but they were on top of her now.

Carter lunged at her trigger hand with the knife and she swung the harpoon gun like a bludgeon, slashing its sharp, hooked prongs at him.

A slice to his hand, cutting him open, sending the knife soaring out of his grip and off into the water.

She kept slicing. A slice to his forearm. A slice to his face, just missing his eye.

He felt the sting each time. He saw the blood. But
he managed somehow to press forward, to get in close enough to put his hands on the gun and yank at it, trying to twist it away from Lilah.

While Carter and Lilah tugged the gun back and forth, Jules grappled with Lilah’s other arm, trying to hold her back as Carter struggled to disarm her.

Lilah was stronger than she looked. All those years of swimming and lifeguarding had turned her legs into sturdy, powerful trunks. Jules couldn’t bring her down. Even one-handed, Lilah was able to push her off, fling her away toward the flimsy railing of the boat. Stunned, Jules lay there and watched as Lilah focused her violent energy on Carter.

It was almost as though the two of them were dancing. They stepped forward and back, each of them jockeying for position, their hands crawling up and down the barrel of the harpoon gun, turning it like a baton, each trying to get the other to let go.

And then as Jules got herself back to her feet and began to yank and twist at Lilah again, Carter finally got his hand on the trigger mechanism. He twisted the gun, trying to aim it at Lilah. He squeezed the trigger and the gun leaped back with a ferocious force.

The shot was wide. Trailing its line behind it, it went sailing over Lilah’s shoulder, shooting straight up toward the mast, to which the boom had been raised and tied tight out of the way. It clipped one of the lines—the
lanyard that happened to be holding the boom in place.

Set loose, the boom, in all its weight, fell with a terrible velocity. It swung down at a horizontal angle, slicing the air and cascading directly toward Carter and Lilah.

Carter was the first to see the boom descend. He recognized the grave danger it posed. He understood that it would strike them if they didn’t dive out of the way immediately. And he knew he had to be decisive finally—if he didn’t, not a single one of them would survive.

He dove for Jules and grabbed her by the waist. He pulled her overboard. The two of them fell to safety in the water.

A split second later they heard the
whoosh
and the
thud
—a horrible cracking sound that would haunt them forever—and Lilah tumbled off the boat behind them. The blunt impact of the boom had snapped her neck and crushed the temporal bone of her skull. She was dead by the time her body hit the water.

Carter and Jules treaded black water, staring dazed at the wide-open cloudless sky.

Lilah was there, too—she floated facedown, her arms and legs out wide like even in death she wanted to grab hold and squeeze tight the whole world. The blood leaked out of her, great gallons of it, mixing with the tidal waters of the bay, a great cloud of blood that swirled and spread around Carter and Jules.

Eventually, the Coast
Guard arrived. They told the captain what happened—not all of it; there’s no way they could explain all of it—but the essential facts. They didn’t try to lie.

Huddled together under a thick felt blanket, they watched as Lilah’s body was reeled out of the water. They saw it hanging limp from a sling at the end of a line as the uniformed men struggled to wrangle it onto the deck.

Jules touched Carter’s hand, ever so lightly.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. His eyes were glued to Lilah’s body, her head bent down until her chin was in her neck, her
arms caught in the sling, out wide like she was on a cross. He shivered, exhausted, chilled to the bone. He felt like he should cry, but he couldn’t.

When he finally answered Jules’s question, he said, “Not really.” He didn’t look at her.

They were unlatching the sling now. Lilah’s body slumped to the deck.

Jules wanted to tell Carter that it would be okay, but she knew this wasn’t true. She huddled close to him.

He covered her hand with his and held it between his two open palms.

“I guess now, it’s now finally over,” he said sadly. “Really and truly and forever. We’re free now.”

She touched his cheek, and he turned to her. She wordlessly tried to press her love into him, to let him know she was still there, to let him know she understood what the freedom they’d gained had cost him.

It was bitter
cold in Philadelphia the night of Valentine’s Day. So cold that a winter weather advisory was in effect for the whole region. The UPenn campus closed early, sending students back to their dorms and faculty members to the warmth of their homes. News alerts advised people to stay inside and not to travel—it had snowed a little in the morning and the freezing temperatures could cause black ice to form on the roads.

Some listened to the warnings and made the best out of it. They canceled their special plans, made microwave popcorn with extra butter, curled up on the couch, and cued up a movie instead. Others ignored the risks and went ahead with their fancy dinner reservations,
performances at the Kimmel Center, and candlelit walking tours through city’s historic district.

Carter wasn’t about to alter course because of a little cold weather either. He’d put so much effort into this date with Jules—two weeks of research to find the perfect French restaurant, tucked away in a refurbished space on Market Street; five days spent neck-deep in the work of John Keats, looking for the right love poem to give to her; and countless hours of shopping on Jewelers’ Row, in search of something delicate that came in a blue velvet box, which he would tuck into his pocket and surprise her with before dessert.

Nothing short of the apocalypse was going to put a stop to their romantic evening.

Or at least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

Jules was already twenty minutes late to dinner. Carter slumped forward in his chair and loosened his red tie, staring at the phone that was lying on his appetizer plate. He’d sent Jules a few text messages, asking her where she was, and she hadn’t responded. He worried that she might have been in an accident—she’d been working at the Annenberg all day, helping stage design a student production of
The Playboy of the Western World
, so they agreed to meet up at the restaurant.

Carter pictured the twisted wreckage of the bus Jules planned on taking downtown, wrapped around a utility pole, no skid marks on the slick asphalt. Sparking
electrical wires tangled around metal and splatters of blood on smashed windows. Exposed bones and mangled limbs.

And dead eyes that would forever haunt the living.

He could feel it happening again. The numbing sensation in his hands and heavy weight on his chest. The dampness under his arms and roiling in his stomach. He reached for his napkin and pressed it against his forehead, wiping away beads of sweat. He took a sip of water, his fingers barely able to grip the thin stem of the glass. When his waiter walked by, Carter could see the look of concern on the young man’s face. If he didn’t go outside and get his breathing under control, he could hyperventilate right now. The restaurant wasn’t busy, so it wouldn’t cause too much of a commotion, but Carter could still feel the humiliation burning his cheeks.

But before he could stumble toward the front door of the bistro, gasping for air, it opened and Jules walked in.

She was wearing a vintage black pea coat with brass buttons and a tweed pencil skirt that hit right at the top of her knee-high riding boots. Her dark hair hadn’t been cut since graduation, so it flowed down to almost her waist. She only had on a hint of make-up—some mascara and burgundy lip stain. Carter wasn’t sure if she ever looked this beautiful.

However, when she smiled at him, he was sure that he wanted to kill her.

Jules took off her coat and sat down across from him, pushing the sleeves of her sweater down to her wrists. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, pretending not to notice the glare he was giving her. “There was a problem with the sets again. God, Jennifer is such a screwup. I can’t believe Harold lets her anywhere near the painting supplies. It’s like he’s totally clueless to what a space cadet she is.”

Carter clutched the napkin tightly, his knuckles turning white. He couldn’t care less about the idiots in the drama department. She knew what would happen to him if she kept him waiting and it was clear from her usual, mindless chatter that she just didn’t care.

“Anyway, I left as soon as I could.” Jules picked up the menu and began studying it, like one of the scripts she had piled up in her room. “Got here in under ten minutes actually, since there was practically nobody on the road.”

“Ten minutes? How’d you manage that on the bus?” Carter asked, his voice brimming with suspicion.

Jules sighed. “Pete gave me a ride.”

The silence that loomed between them nearly choked the life out of Jules. She hid behind the menu for as long as she could, knowing this uncomfortably quiet moment was the precursor to one of Carter’s ugly episodes. She inhaled deeply, preparing for the storm to break, wondering why she was still in this situation. The last few months with him had been pretty unbearable.

And then she remembered. All the nights Carter woke up screaming, terrified by visions of that gruesome day on the boat. All the days he spent locked in his room with the blinds drawn, before he’d seen Dr. Gallagher. If his father hadn’t promised a sizable donation to the university, he would be on academic probation, due to three courses he flunked. Leaving him now would make her the biggest bitch in the world, wouldn’t it?

“So how is Pete these days?” he said. “Are you two a thing now?”

Jules put her menu on the table and stared him down. “Stop it, Carter,” she said firmly.

“What? I’m just asking, since you’d obviously rather spend Valentine’s Day with him instead of me,” he replied.

“That’s not true and you know it,” Jules said. “I was late and he offered to give me a lift over here so I wouldn’t be any later.”

“Really? Wow, he’s such a nice guy,” Carter said, feigning sincerity. “Why didn’t you invite him to come along? I’m sure he could teach me a thing or two. You know, since I’m a shitty boyfriend and everything.”

“You’re not—look, I’m sorry I wasn’t on time. You went through a lot of trouble to plan tonight. But there’s no need to bring Pete into this, okay?” said Jules.

“Why not? He’s the reason you were ignoring me.”

“I wasn’t ignoring you. I just didn’t get a chance to
respond to the zillion texts you sent me,” Jules snapped.

“Excuse me for being scared that you might be dead in a ditch somewhere,” Carter whisper-yelled. “If I knew you were just fucking around with Pete, then I guess I would have relaxed and played Angry Birds.”

Jules swiftly pushed back her chair, the feet screeching against the floor. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said through clenched teeth. “When I get back, you better do or say something to convince me not to walk out of here.”

As Jules stalked off to the restroom, Carter’s head bowed forward. He covered his face in his hands and cursed at himself for acting like an asshole. He hated when he did this to her. He hated how awful and helpless he made her feel. He hated just how familiar his words were, the sound of an unrelenting voice constantly echoing in his mind.

But did he hate it all enough to stop?

Carter stuffed his hand in his pocket, but not the one with the blue velvet box—the one with the small blue plastic bottle, filled with tiny yellow pills. His gaze drifted over to Jules’s purse, which was hung on the back of her chair. He thought about how long she’d be in the bathroom. Two minutes? Maybe three?

He desperately tried to think of convincing things to do and say, just like Jules had asked him to, but instead he convinced himself that he needed to do something
else. Something that he knew he could never take back.

He leaned over and quickly grabbed her bag by the strap, opening it and finding her phone in a side pouch. He plucked it out and swiped his fingers across the screen, accessing her text messages.

Twenty-three from him.

And one from Pete.

Special thanks to
Claudia Gabel, Katherine Tegen, Melissa Miller, Alexandra Arnold, Lauren Flower, Casey McIntyre, Onalee Smith, Kathryn Silsand, and Joel Tippie for their work on this book.

SEAN OLIN
is the author of
Brother/Sister
and
Killing Britney
. He lives in New York City but summers in a beach town that inspired the setting of the Wicked Games series.